Free Angel by Colleen McCullough

morning, I must confess not quite such an eager beaver as I used to be. My life is getting a weeny bit complicated, between nymphomania and soothsaying. Though I’m not sure that confining one’s sexual activity to the weekend qualifies as nymphomania. However, within ten minutes of starting, I forgot that there was any other world than Cas X-ray.
    There are three of us-a senior, a middleman (me), and a junior. I’m not sure that I like Christine Leigh Hamilton, as my boss introduced herself. She’s in her middle thirties, and, from overhearing the occasional conversation between her and Sister Cas, she’s just starting to suffer what I call the “Old Maid Syndrome”. If I’m still single when I hit my middle thirties, I will cut my own throat rather than go through the Old Maid Syndrome. It arises out of spinsterhood and contemplation of an old age spent living with another female in relative penury unless there’s money in the family, which there usually isn’t. And the chief symptom is an overwhelming determination to catch a man. Get married. Have some babies. Be vindicated as a woman. I sympathise, even if I’m determined not to
    contract the malady myself. I’m never sure which drive is uppermost in the O.M.S.-the drive to find someone to love and be loved back, or the drive to achieve financial security. Of course Chris is an X-ray technician, so she’s paid a man’s wage, but if she went to a bank and asked for a mortgage so she could buy a house, she’d be turned down. Banks don’t give mortgages to women, no matter what they’re paid. And most women are paid poorly, so they never manage to save much for their old age. I was talking to Jim about it-she’s a master printer, but she doesn’t get equal pay for equal work. No wonder some women go funny and abrogate men altogether. Bob is a secretary to some tycoon, isn’t exactly overpaid either. And if you work for the Government, you have to leave when you get married. That’s why all the sisters and female department heads are old maids. Though a very few are widows.
    “If it wasn’t for Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, we’d lead a dog’s life,” Jim told me. “Running scared of being found out and evicted, not able to afford to buy a place. The House is our lifeline.”
    Anyway, back to Chris Hamilton. The trouble is that she’s not a mantrap.
    Blocky sort of figure, hair she can’t do a thing with, glasses, the wrong make-up, grand piano legs. Which could be overcome if she had any sense, but she doesn’t. Man sense, I mean. So whenever a man, especially one in white, enters our little domain, she simpers and rushes around and turns cartwheels trying to impress him. Oh, not the New Australian porters (they’re beneath her notice), but even the ambulancemen get cups of tea and coy chats over the bikkies. If we’re not busy, that is, give her her due. Her best friend is Marie O’Callaghan, who happens to be Sister Cas. They share a flat together in Coogee, are both middle-thirties. And they both have the Old Maid Syndrome!
    Why is it that women aren’t deemed real women unless they’ve got a husband and kids? Of course if Chris could read this, she’d sneer and say it’s all very well for me, I’m a mantrap. But why are we categorised like that?
    The junior is very shy and, as usually happens in a busy unit, spends most of her day in the darkroom. Looking back on my own training, there were times when I thought I was better qualified to work for Kodak than in X-ray. But somehow it all evens out in the end, we do get enough experience with the patients to pass our exams and turn into people who send the junior to the darkroom. The trouble is that it’s a question of priorities, especially in Cas, where you can’t make mistakes or have ponk films.
    Five minutes hadn’t gone by before I realised that I wasn’t going to have it all my own way in Cas X-ray. The Cas surgical registrar came in accompanied by his senior resident, took one